Taiping Rebellion

The Taiping Rebellion (December 1850-19 July 1864) was a large-scale civil war in China fought between the Manchu-led Qing dynasty and the Christian millenarian movement of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom.

The rebellion began in the southern province of Guangxi when local officials launched a campaign of religious persecution against Hong Xiuquan's Christian "God Worshipping Society" cult, which claimed that Hong was Jesus' younger brother. Hong Xiuquan, a failed scholar who had studied under a Baptist minister, proclaimed a new dynasty - the "Heavenly Kingdom of Great Peace". His aim was to overthrow what he saw as the "foreign" Qing regime, to take the land into common ownership, and to ban the use of opium, tobacco, and alcohol. Exploiting people's fears about China's failing economy, the rebels rapidly grew in numbers and determination. Within two years, a million-strong army swept down the Yangtze valley and took Nanjing, killing thousands of civilians and over 30,000 imperial soldiers. With Nanjing as its capital, the Heavenly Kingdom expanded to encompass much of south and central China, totalling some 30,000,000 people at its height. However, its power began to wane in 1861 when Hong was repulsed at Shanghai by the European-trained "Ever Victorious Army", led by an American general, Frederick Townsend Ward. On Ward's death, command passed to the British general, Charles Gordon, who, with the aid of modern artillery, retook Nanjing in 1864. During the siege over 100,000 rebels committed suicide, including Hong, who took poison.

A small remainder of Taiping forces continued to fight in northern Zhejiang, rallying behind Hong's son Hong Tianguifu. After Tianguifu's capture on 25 October 1864, Taiping resistance was gradually pushed into the highlands of Jiangxi, Zhejiang, Fujian, and finally Guangdong, where the last Taiping loyalist, Wang Haiyang, was defeated on 29 January 1866. The last Taiping rebels were defeated in 1871.

The Qing were able to reconquer the Heavenly Kingdom, and the God Worshippers were vanquished; lasting damage was dealt to the perception of Christianity in China, and the Hakka and other ethnic groups who supported the Taiping were persecuted. The rebellion sparked some other uprisings, none of which compared to the Taiping Rebellion, which cost between 20,000,000 and 100,000,000 lives. While the Qing won the war, the central court's control over the provinces was diminished, and irregular provincial armies became ever more powerful.